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For over thirty years, I’ve illustrated food. I’ve enjoyed sharing jobs from my career. For this post my images are of hot dogs and burgers.

The first hamburger above was done for my portfolio at the very beginning of my career. I painted it with watercolors. I used a photo on a puzzle box as my reference and the bun was very yellow. Later on, it was always best for me to use my own photos.

I knew that even the messiest food could be fixed when it was illustrated.

Thank God I wasn’t a food photographer; preparing perfect burgers was hard! This is my photo reference for an AM/PM poster job.

I usually took my photos outdoors because I preferred the lighting.

Painting sesame seeds were challenging because I masked out every single one of them using rubber cement.

Eventually, I painted those seeds using acrylic and it was much easier. Because opaque mediums have an inherent bluish tone, it was best to still use the masking fluid and then the acrylic would clean up any mistakes.

Jobs to make burgers and hot dogs more attractive were done for AM/PM Arco Mini-markets and Orange Julius. Reading all the comments from the art director on my marker layout had me working hard. An artist’s conception was a euphemism for fooling the customers. My job was to make the product look a lot better than it really did!

This is a preliminary marker sketch.

A lot of comments on that tissue overlay. Clicking on the image makes them easier to read.

The process of illustrating a poster for Orange Julius starts with the job layout, my photo reference shot, marker sketch and final art.

Marker sketch – in some ways I like it better than the watercolor version.

The bun on the final art was lighter and less colorful. (Probably more edible in appearance that way) Notice the biggest difference – a bigger hot dog than bun. Not true!!!

I have included many marker comps for this post because in some cases I have no other copies; the client kept the final art. For the Del Monte relish labels, my marker renderings are fairly close to how the final art looked. The marker rendering of a grill was done for one of my agents to help me obtain more marker jobs. Later on in my career, I used markers for many final illustrations when time was tight.

On my Sandwich Post I shared a fabric that was called “Deli print.” Well, I also have a burger fabric. Someone else designed it and included Sloppy Joes, which I never even painted; but they did use the same buns and sesame seeds!

I actually illustrated a burger for a financial company. The price sign stuck in the burger was not helpful when I wanted to use the image for my stock agencies. I was able to digitally remove it. The prices for that burger went up over time. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened for illustrators. If I receive prices for my art like I did twenty years ago, I’m very happy!

This was my preliminary marker sketch.

I’m throwing this image in from a menu. Notice that great price – it fits in with the illustration above it showing how burger prices have risen!

For this post I am sharing many different jobs related to chocolate. Although the color of chocolate was fairly unexciting, I discovered there were infinite varieties of brown. In fact, I mixed almost every color on my palette together in order to find them.

I began my career by making paintings that resembled photos. Now I work digitally by using photos and making them look like paintings!

These squares represent my digital work and are fairly recent. This is only a layout, which was gleaned from my photo reference. The painting that followed was more “illustrated.”

This is a marker sketch.

I always like to share my process with lines sketches. The texture for those curls varied considerably between jobs.

When illustrating chocolate curls and squares, there was never an end to art direction for tone and color.

Probably one of my first paintings that propelled me toward being a food illustrator was my Nestle Crunch Bar. It was painted in my last year of college and I learned how hard it was to hand-letter writing on the wrapper. But I loved the broken chocolate texture.

My painting.

This was the photo that I followed as my reference.

This is a close up of the broken chocolate.

I made a promotional postcard using this image. A decade later, I decided to paint a more exciting candy bar. This time I chose a Snicker’s Bar. Thankfully, I discovered a process to work with lettering that was more precise, although it still required painstaking detail and planning.

My photo reference.

I also had postcards made with this image and it was great for getting jobs. Art directors told me it made them hungry.

This label shows how a lot of detail is lost in the printing process. I was disappointed with how my painting looked.

I was told to remove this tiny drip.

This is a marker sketch and not the final painting.

In 1992, I won an award from the Society Of Illustrators of Los Angeles for my Snicker’s bar illustration.

My Snicker’s bar was such an excellent promotion piece that it led to a job illustrating a label for a Balance Bar. I wasn’t allowed to do drips for this painting and I sure missed them. At the end of this post, I’ll share more close-ups of the caramel and chocolate I loved painting.

This was my layout.

There is definitely an “art” to taking a bite out of something I’m illustrating.

Early in my career, I painted four labels for Little Debbie’s Snack Cakes. Once again, painting chocolate was fun and I had to resist snacking on my photo reference. Taking bites out of items was a whole other technique I developed!

The texture for chocolate definitely varied depending upon the product I was illustrating. Combining it with caramel or crispy rice, or shaving it for a curl was certainly different. And splashing, melted chocolate was probably the most difficult thing of all to illustrate.

So for this post, as I share many different jobs that related to chocolate I also share one that was not successful. It was for a chocolate-raspberry product. The line sketch for my art direction looks fairly straightforward. The actual product was dark inside and not very appealing. My final artwork was my best effort, but ultimately was rejected by the client and I was only partially paid.

This product was pretty challenging. I illustrated the raspberries separately.

I was told to put raspberries seeds in there and lighten the filling in contrast with the darker chocolate.

A fairly recent job of mine was for Kirkland/Costco. The illustration was for chocolate calcium chews. I share below my photo reference for the chews. I never liked illustrating splashes and was relieved that this one worked.

On this one, I had a lot of photo reference to choose from.

Some of these paintings were rendered with markers and colored pencils and others were created with watercolor dyes. I have a blog where I describe my technique and have a lot more information. It is at:

I have already shared my illustration of Brach candies on 20 Lines. This painting was one I did for my own purposes – I call it a “portfolio piece.” Illustrating candy was enjoyable for me. I appreciated how colorful, reflective and tempting those items were that I was painting. I share below my illustration process with a painting I abandoned, photo reference and some close-ups.

My own photo that I chose to work from.

Creating portfolio paintings to showcase my ability led to paying jobs. My Brach candy portfolio painting brought me many other illustration assignments involving candy. For Part 1 of this post, I share some of those other candy jobs.

This is my photo reference pinned to a board.

This is a marker sketch.

Taking my photo reference was also a creative process. When I illustrated a chocolate drop called “Dittos” I set up the candy on a board and pinned each one in a different perspective. Above is my photo reference for that assignment and the marker layout I created from it. I don’t have a scan of the final art or printed label for this job.

Looks like they picked “B.” (Less drippy, though)

Looks like “B” is the winner again! (This time it was drippy)

I’m glad I could improve upon my photo!

I became adept at illustrating mint leaves and could do them from memory. Mint and chocolate were definitely an interesting contrast of dark and light. I am sharing many different mint-related illustrations and I’m even including a few line sketches.

That leaf needed a lot of improvement!

A printed version of the mint.

Below are some miscellaneous jobs. Colorful candies like my cinnamon and butterscotch illustrations were far more exciting to illustrate than those brown root beer barrels. But I was proud of how realistic they were.

And my broken chocolate egg for Dove was extremely difficult because of the embossed lettering on top. I only have the marker sketch below from that particular job.

One day, I actually did receive an illustration assignment for Brach Candies. Thankfully by then, I had learned how to create rub-down letters through a photographic process to use on the wrappers. It was a relief that I didn’t have to paint those tiny letters with a brush!

This black and white photo-copy was the used to create a negative. Then rub-down letters could be made from it. With computers now it’s far easier than it used to be!

This is a color photo-copy of the final art showing the lettering on it.

This is a color copy of a preliminary marker sketch.

I have a blog where I describe my technique and have a lot more information. It is at:

I am a food illustrator and have illustrated a lot of fruit. For this post I am sharing cherries. Cherries had challenges with the long and thin stems, which needed to be delicate and smooth. The dimension of a cherry was created with a bottom shadow and simple highlight.

It was important that the highlight wasn’t too perfect or the cherry would look like plastic. The cherries I illustrated were either bright red or a dark magenta to indicate “black cherry” flavor. Cherry leaves were interesting to paint because they had very serrated edges.

For fun, I share a large fruit illustration that includes cherries. It was large because it would wrap around a jar for a jam label. The art director requested that my painting be done in a certain style. I had to follow a certain color and texture for the leaves. And, I was told to have harsh shadows. Normally, I use reflected light on the edges of fruit and never let the shadow reach the edge. The effect was definitely interesting for me!

My cherry illustrations were used on labels for yogurt, juice, jam and liqueur. There is one painting that was very unusual because it was for train car rentals.

I never liked painting clear liquid, but this painting was my best effort that I was pleased with. Some of these paintings were rendered with markers and colored pencils and others were created with watercolor dyes. All of these paintings were done before Photoshop existed. I have a blog where I describe my technique and have a lot more information. It is at:

For over thirty years, I’ve illustrated food. When I first began my career, I had only a portfolio of paintings I created while in college. Let’s pretend the watercolor above is for an Italian soup! I was 18 years old when I painted it and copied a photo that I saw in a magazine. Later on, I used my own photographs.

I’ve enjoyed sharing jobs from my career. For this post, my subject is Italian food. And the billboard above happens to be one of the very first jobs I received after I graduated college in 1981.

The painting was fairly large and a lot more work went into before it was cropped off! I did prepare a custom pizza and sadly did not satisfy the art director with enough drips of cheese. Somehow, he found a way to add them. Years later, I illustrated another slice of pizza with cheese dripping and this time I made sure the drips were emphasized.

My job always started with the art director’s layout. Then I took a photograph for my reference (notice how I burned the pizza crust?). Good thing that I saved the spatula from my first pizza job years earlier.

I traced my photo and sent line drawings to the art director. After that, I created a marker sketch that was usually very realistic. I’ve actually made some of my marker renderings into final illustrations.

When I had to illustrate a pizza inside of a stopwatch, I dreaded illustrating the watch. It was far easier to illustrate something organic instead of perfectly round and shiny metal.

I always found comments made by the art director to be interesting.

But I closely followed my reference and relied on an old-fashioned airbrush to achieve perfect gradations.

One of my larger packaging assignments was for the food manufacturer, Ragu. I created approximately 25 labels for their Italian sauces. I share some marker sketches; printed labels and even an original painting taken from a scan of an old slide. I was definitely tired of mushrooms and onions when I finished that painting!

This is taken from a color photocopy.

This was a marker layout.

Below is another assignment for Chef Boyardee. I did not illustrate the ravioli and my paintings needed to be very photorealistic since the photo would be in front of them. My painting images were scanned from color photocopies and not the best representation of my work.

And my last illustration was taken from a series of labels for flavored non-stick sprays. The flavor was olive oil spray, which doesn’t sound very appealing to me.

I have a lot more information about my illustration career on my blog “Illustrating My Life,” which can be found at this link:

This is my favorite painting of a sandwich, which I created in order to add to my portfolio. Below my illustration is the actual photo of a sandwich that I assembled. How in the world would anyone bite into it?

For over thirty years, I’ve illustrated food. I’ve enjoyed sharing jobs from my career. Because I’ve illustrated so many fruits, it was easy to sort them by name. For this post, I am sharing sandwiches and even fit a s’more illustration for Honey Maid into this category.

On an advertisement for Pro Write software, I was instructed to place a package in the foreground. Later on, I painted a mouse pad to replace that part of my illustration. It made it handy so that I could market the painting in my stock library.

Each element of my painting required a lot of research and good reference. Even the pink message needed to look as if had writing on it in perspective. I enjoyed the luminescence of the soda, and hated painting the watch dial. I was proud of the rye bread and the realism of it with the seeds.

When I was given the assignment to create a s’more – it was lucrative based on the fact that I only had 4 days to complete it. I have scanned the art director’s layout as well as the printed version. I was surprise how a box was inserted behind the plate on the left side, which certainly was not correct perspective by any means. But the background also had a weird look.

This was the art director’s layout.

As a result of this job, I learned how to microwave a perfect s’more. My own children screamed watching marshmallows blow up in the microwave after 10 seconds.

The printed version with a strange perspective.

I share another illustration for Honey Maid, which also had an intensely difficult deadline. I searched far and wide to find a specific style of lunch box that the client wanted. It was interesting to illustrate another illustration on the box. I used a toothbrush to splatter watercolor paint in order to achieve the graham cracker texture.

The printed advertisement.

This roast beef sandwich was one of my first paintings that I did when I first started my career. I certainly improved painting water droplets after many years of practice.Below is a marker comp for a job that was never finalized. That often happened with many jobs, especially when a product was still being formulated.This illustration was very complex. It was an assignment to create a cover for a bread machine recipe book. For some reason, I never received a copy of the printed book, which I probably pursued relentlessly.Early in my career, I created many illustrations that were used on a menu. I never received copies so one day I ate at the restaurant and swiped a few menus. Although I felt guilty, it was vindication because the art director tricked me. I gave up rights to my original art when I cashed the check because he wrote something on the back with those words. Unfortunately, I didn’t pay close enough attention because I was in such a hurry to deposit the check.

This job was done a long time ago and I feel old seeing those prices.

I included this, even though I plan to have another post of just my burger paintings!

Later in my career, a fabric company bought existing art to design a deli fabric. It was eventually used on aprons, pot holders and towels. I did not make much money and even paid for a bunch of samples because I thought they would make terrific gifts. I even use them!

For over thirty years, I’ve illustrated food. This is my second post of illustrations with veggies.

Most of these paintings were created before the digital age. But one of the best tools that taught me how to utilize the computer, were scans of my existing images. I was able to digitally select and separate images in order to create samples of my work. (The Italian subject was not strictly veggies, but I included it for fun.

The only painting that is a result of working digitally is the nacho cheese and jalapenos. I created my painting first on the computer. I painted with watercolors over a light print of that illustration.

This illustration of tomatoes below is actually a digital reconfiguration of tomatoes from several different paintings. When I “reconfigure” a painting, I try to be sure that the color, lighting and shadows are consistent.

Another one of my “reconfigured” paintings.

Some of my illustrations (Salsa Verde, corn and avocados) were actually created as marker layouts.

Since my career spanned over thirty years, I clearly see a lot of development with my style. Some clients demanded extreme realism, whereas other clients preferred a specific style.

Below are examples of some of my vegetable illustrations on printed labels:

I have a lot more information about my illustration career on my blog “Illustrating My Life,” which can be found at this link: http://foodartist.wordpress.com

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